


Grace

by Kogiopsis



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Dragon daughter is canon in my worldstate fight me bioware, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-14
Updated: 2016-01-14
Packaged: 2018-05-13 21:00:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5716936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kogiopsis/pseuds/Kogiopsis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daine Surana returns from the west, and she brings a gift for the woman she loves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Grace

Daine had always been an inept healer.  She’d tried, struggling again and again with the spells, but her magic didn’t shape itself well to anything beyond a raw infusion of power.  She didn’t have the delicacy or the focus, in the end; what she held was primal, ferocious, and beautiful, but it couldn’t save lives.  So instead, she studied herblore, against the possibility that she might be called upon, someday, to help someone - and that she might leave Kinloch to have that opportunity.

She knew Andraste’s Grace when she saw it, though she did not know its significance.  Still, she saw it and thought of Leliana: pale skin and red hair and sometimes, the flush in her cheeks after a hard fight; the grace of a dance, of a melodic voice, of faith and the light it had brought.  Daine cut the flower low, leaving a long stem, and passed her hands lightly over it to encase it in ice.  It wouldn’t be much of a gift if it had already wilted.

When she presented it to the bard, Daine was surprised by how she exclaimed over it.  To her it was a simple enough gesture; to Leliana it had restored a memory long-lost.  She smiled, and Daine couldn’t help smiling back.

Weeks, maybe months later she confessed the true reason for the flower and Leliana smiled at her again, running her fingers gently through Daine’s loose hair.

“I know, my love,” she said.  “Now I have two reasons to treasure it.”

* * *

 

 _Down_ , Daine thinks as they cross another pass in the Frostbacks, and Cecilie obligingly circles to land at one end of a long meadow.  Daine swings her leg over the dragon’s neck and slides down, wincing as the shock of her landing meets the stiffness in her hips.  Cecilie is nowhere near her full growth, but even as a juvenile her shoulders are far broader than any horse.  Daine stretches her legs as best she can, adjusts the staff strapped to her back, and sets off for the edge of the meadow.

She finds what she seeks at the base of an enormous old tree a few feet into the forest shade and, kneeling, uses her belt knife to cut the stem long.  It takes barely a brush of her fingertip to protect it with ice now and she could, perhaps, even go so far as glass - but no, better to have it alive.

Cecilie flies her a ways further, but lands at Daine’s suggestion shortly after they catch their first long-distant glimpse of Skyhold’s towers.  Daine rests her forehead on the dragon’s snout for long minutes, making sure Cecilie understands that she is to stay out of sight of people and, preferably, out of arrow- or spell-range, then steps back and closes her eyes against the dust and grass raised by the backdraft as Cecilie takes off.  Once the wind settles down she turns back to the east, to the towers she had barely seen but which mark her final destination.

Once, she could not have carried her staff, armor, and pack with her on the final flight - but once she’d been young, raw-edged and barely Harrowed.  Ten years and some study of force magic later, it was an easy enough trick.  The most difficult part was taking off from the ground as a raven.

She follows other birds to the rookery but there alights on a windowsill, looking around to determine the lay of the land - and just before her is Leliana, bent over a desk and writing furiously.

Daine’s heartbeat accelerates.  Five years since their final parting west of Velun; five years in which she has come no closer to hearing Leliana’s voice than reading her words on a page.  Five years to imagine returning at last, and yet she cannot react, as tongue-tied as a nervous teenager.

Leliana looks up to where Daine sits on the windowsill and cocks her head.

“You’re not one of mine,” she says, sliding on a heavy falconer’s glove and reaching out a hand.  Daine steps onto it, her claws grasping Leliana’s fist with what passes for tenderness as a bird.  Leliana, eyes narrowed but movements slow and gentle, gently strokes her back from the crest of her head to her tail, and Daine shivers and-

in a ripple of magic, falls back to herself, landing heavily in Leliana’s arms.

Silence between them, though from the next level down she hears a quiet “what was that?” and a quieter “best not to ask”.  There are brilliant blue eyes fixed on her face, holding her in place as surely as any spell could, and Daine does not know what to say - or even what could be said, after five years of distance.  Not for the first time she wonders if Leliana has moved on, resigned herself already to Daine’s inevitable death from the Taint and made the best of it with someone else.

Leliana gathers her up into an awkward, crushingly tight embrace, and she lets that worry go.  Into its place, instead, pours the warm and weightless feeling of being loved, wanted, _cherished_ , and she works her arms free to wrap them around Leliana as well, holding her as if she is the only real thing in the world.  In that moment she  might as well be:  Daine has dreamed of this reunion, has been tempted again and again by the Fade with promises of this moment, but none of those temptations could begin to compare with the reality.

“Maker,” Leliana whispers into Daine’s neck.  “You’re here.”

“I’m here,” Daine says, turning her head to press a kiss to Leliana’s jawline.  “Hopefully… for good, this time.”

Leliana sits back, opening enough distance between them that she can study Daine’s face.  She lifts her un-gloved hand to run it through Daine’s hair, cut short after Cecilie burned half of it off, and rests it on the back of Daine’s neck in a familiar, intimate gesture.

“Oh!”  Daine remembers something, and drops her pack from her shoulders to rummage around inside.  From it she draws out the object of her morning’s quest:  a single stalk of Andraste’s Grace, long and elegant, red-and-white petals curling away from the center in perfect symmetrical beauty.  She holds it out to Leliana, who tilts the stem so that the flower brushes her nose and inhales deeply.

No one else in the tower will admit, afterwards, that they heard Lady Nightingale weep.


End file.
